For the second year in a row, the U.S. business magazine Forbes has named Russian President Vladimir Putin the most powerful person in the world.

The magazine said its editors picked the Russian leader over President Barack Obama, with Chinese President Xi Jinping, Pope Francis and German Chancellor Angela Merkel rounding out the top five.

Forbes said it picked Putin because "he strong-armed his way into possession of Crimea and waged an ugly proxy war in neighboring Ukraine, during which an almost certainly Russian-supplied surface-to-air missile downed a civilian jetliner."

The magazine said that "as the undisputed, unpredictable and unaccountable head of an energy-rich, nuclear-tipped state, no one would ever call him weak."